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The Pathfinders on the PriceWriters Podcast Episode 37
19 Plays23 days ago
In this episode of The Price Writer Podcast, Catrin and Jeremy explore "The Pathfinders" by Will Iredale, the remarkable story of an elite Royal Air Force unit that transformed the accuracy of bombing missions during World War II. Together, they discuss what pricing professionals can learn from this extraordinary group, including the importance of clear organisational goals, leadership, specialisation, and innovation under pressure. The conversation also touches on the value of low-tech improvements, continual review and feedback, and developing people even in high-stakes environments. While this episode references war, air raids, and casualties in the historical context of WWII, it is approached with deep empathy and respect for those affected by conflict, past and present. Thoughtful, insightful, and surprisingly relevant, this discussion shows how lessons from history can shape stronger, more connected pricing teams today. 🎧 Listen now to discover what pricing’s “tinfoil trick” might be. #InsurancePricing #PriceWriters #ThePriceWriterPodcast #LeadershipInPricing Price Writers transforms pricing professionals into the most respected leaders in insurance.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Obviously, tinfoils are tinfoil. Are you going to use that tag now? Brilliant.
Introduction to the Price Browser Podcast
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Price Browser Podcast with Jeremy Keating and me, Katrin Townsend. Join us as we explore and discuss the world in insurance-related books, offering our insights, recommendations, and crucially, how to apply it to insurance pricing roles.
Insights from 'Pathfinders' by Will Iredale
00:00:31
Speaker
Today we'll be talking about the Pathfinders by Will Iredale, which tells the story of an elite Royal Air Force unit in World War II. While we're going to focus on what this can teach pricing teams about organisational structure, specialisation and innovation, in this episode we will be referencing war, air raids and casualties in the historical context of the Second World War.
00:00:56
Speaker
There's a lot going on in the world currently that touches these scenes. So if this episode feels a little too close to home for you, please know that we hold you in our thoughts, stay safe, and we love you.
00:01:09
Speaker
Let's be honest, Jeremy, this isn't the usual kind of book that we talk about on this podcast.
Resonance of Pathfinders with Pricing Professionals
00:01:13
Speaker
This book tells the tale of the Pathfinders, special elite unit that was set up in World War II by Don Bennett to solve the problem of inaccurate bombing across Europe.
00:01:25
Speaker
So tell us why it might resonate with pricing professionals. This is a great book, actually. I really enjoyed it. So it tells the story of an elite RAF group that would go ahead of the main bombing runs to pinpoint accurately where they needed to target.
00:01:42
Speaker
And it's just such a rich and interesting story. The book is very good at giving us the high level, all the strategic decisions that were made, and also the individual tales of people that...
00:01:54
Speaker
actually went ahead and did this work and what their lives were like whilst they did it. And also filling in the detail in between of the people that worked in and around this elite unit as well.
00:02:06
Speaker
It does not shy away from ethical dilemmas and it's quite interesting in my mind how... There's so much discussion behind the scenes on whether the targets they're choosing or the tactics they're using for bombing are ethical and acceptable.
00:02:23
Speaker
And so often they end up with this kind of mishmash of different people's opinions to sort of come to an average of stuff that everyone could kind of agree was acceptable and probably wasn't the optimal in any particular dimension.
00:02:40
Speaker
But I found Adele, the way he presents these issues with empathy and balance and really gives us testimonials from both sides of the conflict is very powerful.
Leadership and Goal Setting in Pricing Teams
00:02:53
Speaker
The Pathfinders had a really clear goal. Do you think that most pricing teams feel that their goal is clear? I think the Pathfinders did have a really clear goal and it's quite interesting. I had no idea just how much they collected stat statistics on their bombing runs to analyse and discuss what worked and what didn't. and I do think pricing teams generally do have a clear goal. So it's hitting the financial targets that are set by the organisation is usually quite clear to us. So we know that we need a particular loss ratio or particular amount.
00:03:28
Speaker
of volume or gwp so in that way i do think goals are quite clear and i do think it's quite similar for the pathfinders actually it was pretty clear that they needed to hit those targets those like they were physical targets other financial targets A lot of what goes into that though, similar to a pricing team is not very well defined actually and not necessarily all that clear. I don't think, as I mentioned, there were lots of people involved behind the scenes in deciding what the strategy and the tactics were. And often it was kind of a mishmash of stuff.
00:04:03
Speaker
I would think it very hard for any one person to tell you succinctly what the strategy was of the RAF what the strategy is of pricing team.
00:04:15
Speaker
The Pathfinder unit was set up to improve the accuracy of the RA air. And what's really interesting about how they achieve that higher accuracy is that they didn't try and improve the accuracy of every aircraft team.
00:04:31
Speaker
Don Bennett recognised that a level of specialisation and leadership would be more effective, which is why he set up the Pathfinder units. Those planes would fly ahead of the main squadron and they would drop coloured flares close to, so i think it was like three miles out and then one mile out and then on the target itself.
00:04:49
Speaker
And then those flares would light the way for the subsequent aircraft. To what extent do you think that specialization and leadership carries across to improving pricing goals?
00:05:03
Speaker
think the leadership point particularly is an interesting one. So when you come down to it, pricing team in a modern insurance company is responsible for the revenue and margin of the organization. They are the team most at the forefront of actually delivering on those plans.
00:05:24
Speaker
I know that other people, obviously other people are involved. You need your sales team to actually get the product sold. And I'm not underestimating how important may is. You need claims to keep hold of costs and so on.
00:05:35
Speaker
But actually, we're very much at the vanguard as a pricing team. If we don't deliver, a lot of the rest of it doesn't matter. So, and it was like that for the pathfinders, really. They had to be accurate. They had to be on point to actually do this. If they made a mistake, then things would go wrong. And in fact, there is a particular story in there where they dropped the flares in the wrong place.
00:05:56
Speaker
and And then subsequently, all the bombs were dropped in the wrong place. So I do think that carries across quite well, is to say that you actually really need your pricing team, your leaders to be really, really good.
00:06:09
Speaker
in order for people to follow and also do a good job. And then on the specialization, I think it's an interesting point. So from my point of view, I think it is important that people have multiple skills.
00:06:22
Speaker
So I think it's good for people to move around the pricing team, even if they end up specializing in a particular area that they are best at or feel most comfortable in. I think like like with so many things, it's important to actually move around the team and find out what it's like.
00:06:37
Speaker
I don't think it works very well if someone's role is just really very, very specific, such as every year they remake the household peril cost models or something like that because they don't learn about the whole process.
00:06:53
Speaker
And in fact, I think one of the biggest things people in pricing can learn about that's important is actually learning about claims and because we are effectively constantly modeling claims. That's where the cost actually comes from. So having more knowledge of these things is just so important.
Importance of Low-Tech Innovations
00:07:09
Speaker
The thing that struck me when reading the book was how some of the innovations were super low-tech. So of course there were the high-tech improvements too and the new aircraft Mosquito.
00:07:20
Speaker
but one example is how they discovered that if you drop strips of tinfoil over Berlin, it would refract the Germans' radar and it made it appear that a huge, you know, 1,000 squadron air force was flying over Berlin, when in fact it was less than 20 planes.
00:07:39
Speaker
Of course, that trick didn't work forever, but it did work the first couple of times enough to allow the rest of the Air Force to get their hits in elsewhere. What are the low-tech improvements that you think pricing teams are missing? What's our tinfoil?
00:07:54
Speaker
I think a big thing that people are missing actually is organization and just being really, really good at actually organizing things and timing them properly. I've seen this done really well, but particularly communicating a lot with teams outside of pricing all like all of the time, particularly if you're thinking about making a change, if you're going to bring in GBMs, don't build a GBM and then tell people that you built a GBM and expect them to sign it off and deploy it.
00:08:21
Speaker
and Okay. Talk to them from the start, talk to them about what you're doing, make it clear, have a roadmap and a plan so people know the times that things are going to happen. They know when they'll need to sign things off and they know what they're doing.
00:08:34
Speaker
So I think really getting that, which is just a low tech thing, but actually just working well with other teams is important. So you've got organizational tools. We've talked about Git before. I think Kanban's quite good for like low-tech organizing, organization.
00:08:49
Speaker
I think Kanban works quite well in a pricing team where you've got pieces that you need to move forward through a process and talk to people regularly about. And it's important that people know where they are and you can be nice and flexible and move things about.
00:09:04
Speaker
To me, it's not reviewing your estimates. Okay. At the end of every sortie, the or RAF would send plane with a camera across the site to assess the accuracy and then compare that to their goals.
00:09:20
Speaker
There was this continual review and improve. I just don't see that being done often in the pricing space. I think of estimation processes like setting inflation numbers.
00:09:33
Speaker
Teams might do that quarterly, say. But we set the numbers but never review them. We never look back and say, well, you know, a 2022 number, obviously we're not going to keep predicting that.
00:09:46
Speaker
but how close was our prediction to the actual, even its initial phases. And by looking back at that, we can actually spot trends in our own estimation, like, oh, we tend to overestimate inflation initially.
00:10:01
Speaker
That would be really valuable feedback for a team to know. It's so simple though, and it really would help future prediction. I wonder whether it's seen as being too low tech, almost too simple.
00:10:16
Speaker
or Or is it a fear of failure? Like they don't want to... i I think there's a general malaise in pricing about actually the level of uncertainty in what we do. I think there's a tendency to come up with the expected values and just hope that that's okay.
00:10:36
Speaker
And then we don't go back and revisit them. And we ought to because we ought to understand the difference between our predictions and our actuals, because that would help us understand future volatility.
00:10:49
Speaker
And like you say, it's that the systematic issues that we make as well. So i think I think it's something that we generally avoid too much in pricing, actually admitting that what we're doing is ah effectively random variables. There's distributions around these things. We're not just going to hit the expected value all the time.
00:11:10
Speaker
What really struck me is the extreme pace of technological change during the Second
Technological Advancements Driven by Necessity
00:11:16
Speaker
World War. So it came up in this book and I've read about this elsewhere. So very often, like with the Pathfinders, the Allies were actually not the most advanced at the start of the war.
00:11:27
Speaker
The Axis had already found ways of using radar beams across the UK to guide their own bombers to locations. They're relatively primitive, but it's forms of triangulation to actually mean that bombers arrive at least over the right cities.
00:11:43
Speaker
So we were behind. We were using septons to navigate by the stars to actually arrive at the right locations at the start the war, which is jaw dropping for people. I was really shocked by that.
00:11:54
Speaker
But actually in those five, six years of the war, we went from celestial navigation to incredibly accurate radar technology. And, and...
00:12:05
Speaker
There were lots of changes. So even the flares, literally teams of people were working on making the flares better, more powerful, stronger, brighter, different colors to indicate different things.
00:12:17
Speaker
The actual dissemination through the flares squadrons of information, which is something a lot of people find hard, a lot of organizations find hard, was really well done. So people knew what colored players they were looking out for on which sorties and so on. So things were not lost. People knew what they were doing.
00:12:36
Speaker
So I think innovation often often comes from necessity. and this scenario where you really did see innovation happening and it was necessary. They really needed to innovate. They really needed to improve.
00:12:51
Speaker
The sheer scale of logistics is incredible. So they had to perfectly time planes taking off from multiple sites across the UK, line them up to travel over to Europe to gather.
00:13:04
Speaker
They might have had escorts, they might have escorts a certain amount of way they have to get certain planes in front for the pathfinding to actually work they had to time these there are documented times where they arrived within moments of specific times that they had to be over a city in germany after like a five-hour flight like and arriving specifically at the right time and place that was hard and that was things that they achieved from really being behind at the start to actually be well, well in front by the end of the war.
00:13:37
Speaker
It really is quite incredible. But yeah, I'm blown away by the logistics and the complicated nature of these things and how many people had to organize these things to make sure they work perfectly.
00:13:48
Speaker
And this, this was serious things, you know, if they got them wrong, there were serious consequences. Yeah, it's absolutely staggering. They tell you lots detail about the meetings they had before they went on the assortees.
00:14:02
Speaker
Everyone involved would need to be at the meeting listening intently for their exact role, their exact destination, their exact timing, like you say. And I wonder whether one of the reasons that there was such accuracy in hitting the goals and getting to the jet stations exactly at the right time was that there was such a high level of personal responsibility and within the plane.
00:14:28
Speaker
So within the plane, a team maybe of four to five people. So pilot, navigator, rear gunner, bomber, and maybe some others in some of the larger planes. But those four or five people, they were responsible for each other in that situation.
00:14:46
Speaker
And if anything went wrong, it would have been their lives. There was such a sense of accountability instead of feeling able to pass the buck upwards or across or to anything else. really was...
00:15:00
Speaker
just very acute for them and the risks of being early late were incredibly high for these young men. i think it said that the average number of sorties in the Pathfinder was left in five.
00:15:15
Speaker
It was incredibly low, wasn't it? So, you know, huge amount of danger. But the one thing that I thought was really fascinating despite that actually was that, yes, they didn't have long expected lifespans, but there was still so much emphasis on developing the people.
00:15:34
Speaker
And one of the things that Don Bennett in particular encouraged was for the pilots in particular to improve their aerial acrobatics.
00:15:45
Speaker
Loops and loops, tight type corkscrew spins flying upside down or between buildings. And you think in a lot of ways that seems very frivolous.
00:15:56
Speaker
um This book really details some instances where those acrobatics actually got people out of tight scrapes. And I think pricing teams can probably learn something from this because yes, we have very high churn, particularly if your team is based in London.
00:16:15
Speaker
And sometimes I think that's used as a reason not to develop people. think, well, I don't want to put a lot of effort in because they might leave soon, but developing your people and improving personal accountability or even team accountability actually gets results.
00:16:34
Speaker
I really feel like the Pathwind has proved that. Very, very small team. There was, i I can't remember how many squadrons, but there was a very small unit of Paris to the rest of the RAF. And yet they had such an outsized impact.
00:16:47
Speaker
Yeah, I do agree. Think about the role of the navigator. The navigator would be in the center of the plane. It would be freezing cold. And it was like being spun around constantly with someone banging pans in your ears whilst you try and do calculus.
00:17:04
Speaker
Right. And it was crucial to get these numbers right as well. And some of us complain that it's Monday morning. Yeah. So it is a very different world and they did work extremely, extremely hard to actually achieve these things.
00:17:19
Speaker
So Jeremy, do you recommend this book, A, to pricing professionals and B, for general consumption?
00:17:29
Speaker
I definitely recommend it for general consumption. i think anyone that's interested in military history, the Second World War, technology, there's just such a big list of reasons why someone would find this book interesting. So yes, I do.
00:17:44
Speaker
Pricing professionals, I'm not as sure really. I think I took a lot away from it, but I don't necessarily think every pricing professional would. I think you already have to be quite interested in military history and technology to really benefit from it.
00:18:00
Speaker
What do you think, Katrin? Well, you know, I recommend this book for general consumption because I did literally recommend this book to you. to have hit ah It was one of my five star reads last year. It's such a good book.
00:18:13
Speaker
I think I agree you. You know, pricing pressure is very busy and the read across is interesting. But if you don't read that many books, you don't have that much time to commit to reading.
00:18:24
Speaker
I probably would pick something a little bit more relevant, but I do love this book. The other book I recommend on a similar seam is Mosquito by Roland White. And it's all focused on the aircraft, obviously not so much on the pathfinders or that side of it.
00:18:41
Speaker
But if you want a book that's all about technological improvement and... Balancing research and development with other goals. I think the mosquito book is really interesting. There's loads of great things in this book. One of the other things was that they introduced badges of appreciation for those who had done 10 sorties.
Recognition and Team Achievements
00:19:00
Speaker
And that's not a particularly big number, but it's enough that people wanted to do it. right They also did another think it was called the golden eagle 25. And just being a Pathfinder, there was a special badge for as well. And it was super coveted. Yeah.
00:19:17
Speaker
Yeah. I know that badges, stickers, whatever that this sort of token gesture can, can feel bit empty. Sometimes can feel bit patronizing, but I do think that if it's something that you as an organization say, no, actually this is something we really value. So we are going to do a special reward for it, whether that's a certificate, whether that's a call out in a team meeting or something like that.
00:19:42
Speaker
But making sure that you acknowledge whatever you say is valuable. We've talked about appreciation on the podcast before, but I do think that appreciation is something that all teams can do better, particularly pricing teams, just because we're under a lot of pressure a lot of the time. And so I love this example. Obviously this Pathfinder team was under so much pressure and yet the golden eagle and the badges that they got was still something that just introduced a bit of levity and appreciation.
00:20:10
Speaker
Hmm. think that's really
Training and Post-War Success of Pathfinders
00:20:12
Speaker
true. I think actually on the development point, it's interesting how many of them went to go on to be quite accomplished in their lives after being Pathfinders. So there's people who were involved in government policy afterwards, there's an MP.
00:20:27
Speaker
There are people that led airlines and there are the smaller stories of people that were pilots and so on, but people went on to quite accomplished careers after being Pathfinders. And I think that does show in the level of training and development that they had.
00:20:43
Speaker
People who could work well under pressure are probably going to do well whatever they do. Mm-hmm. I think training your people to stay calm under pressure and to still achieve under pressure, to not forget everything they know, and also to lead others under pressure.
00:21:01
Speaker
i think that is an incredibly rare talent. And I think that Don Bennett managed to
00:21:12
Speaker
bottle less effectively and yeah it it really really turned the course of the war be honest so A really good book. I really enjoyed this book.
00:21:24
Speaker
Do you know what love about this book? It was brilliantly readable. flew by, that's such a bad pun, but it genuinely had a time. Yeah, you know what mean? It was such, it read really easily. It didn't feel like a slog.
00:21:36
Speaker
I, yeah, I've really enjoyed this book. I wanted to listen to it constantly. actually think this is probably one of the most readable books I've read about military improvement in Second World War.
00:21:47
Speaker
I think it is super readable. i think it's got a really good balance between how much of it is first-hand accounts actually and about the people that, I would say on the ground, again that again, that's totally the wrong thing to say at the forefront.
00:22:01
Speaker
The actual people that were doing the flying or doing the navigating, it's got really good information about that.
Statistical Approaches and Success
00:22:07
Speaker
But I thought also going all the way up to Churchill ultimately made the decision set up the pathfinders and it was actually against to resistance from supposed expert bombers and so on. He thought it wasn't the right course to be taking.
00:22:21
Speaker
And in fact, actually, it's quite interesting how the whole reason it's set up is from stat statistics. Initially, they were thought that they were doing okay at bombing. mean, it wasn't until people collected the statistics and were like, it was really awful, wasn't it?
00:22:36
Speaker
ah third, third. Was it a third actually made it to the right location, but even they didn't necessarily hit the target? Yeah, it's like within it was about a third and within three miles initially Yeah, that was it A third actually managed to make it within three miles And by the end of the war, they were pretty much hitting specific buildings It was over 95% Yeah, it was absolutely stunning how much more accurate they became over that short period Yeah, think that's what really strikes me is the organisation of the RAF and the Pathfinders were just incredibly well done. So they did dev develop people, they did have good structures in place, they did make sure people knew what their job was.
00:23:16
Speaker
People didn't go off being like, not understanding what their role was. So obviously there were still mistakes because mistakes occurred, but it was a rarer thing. The book does talk a lot about the organization of the unit, but like I said, it balances with these personal testimonies.
00:23:35
Speaker
Your organization is ultimately built of individuals. And I think this book really, it makes the individual shine. And I think this book actually makes it a wonderful case that with the right people and the development that you give them,
00:23:51
Speaker
then they just need the right structures and they they're going to achieve it for you. I think this book is all about development and the right structures that combine just magic. That's right.
00:24:04
Speaker
Next time we'll be discussing Winning Conditions by Christine Hoffbeck who is absolutely fantastic. So she was a Survivor contestant. She's a fellow actor and excellent to follow on LinkedIn as well.
00:24:16
Speaker
Thanks for joining us today and we hope to see you next time.
00:24:25
Speaker
PriceWriters transforms pricing professionals into the most respected leaders in insurance. So find out more about our PriceWriter Pro platform by visiting pricewriters.com.